Extracting Digital Video from LaserDiscs?

americanatavist asks: "I was wondering how feasible it would be to digitally copy LaserDisc movies to DVD. Clearly this would require the standard suite of tools to make a DVD. What method would yield the maximum level of quality? Is it worth the effort to find a means of extracting the digital information using an LD-ROM drive, or would the S-video from a regular LD player suffice?"

method of digitizing a laser disk

[RogueScientist]

A laser disk has pits on the disk that vary in length and position in the sequence. So essentially you have a time and amplitude domain that generates a analog waveform. Why would it not be possible to construct a special apparatus that reads the length of the pits as accurately as possible and store that information in a data file with a 64 bit number for each pit with a time? Once you have this the data you have captured is digital and can use the necessary analysis to generate the image information from that data? It seems a lot better than dealing with disk players that are taking this information doing various filtering on the information and working with the generated analog frequency waveform.

Re:doing this with origional STAR WARS trilogy

[Glonoinha]

Actually if you buy (or bought) the trilogy on tape, you can download and view those.
If anybody ever gives you any shit about it, tell 'em I said it was ok.

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